"No
book published within the memory of man, in the English or any other language,
has effected so great a revolution in the previously received opinions of
society... The influence of that unpretending treatise has extended to hundreds
of thousands of minds which know not whence they derived the new light that
has broken in upon them, and percolated into thousands of circles that are
scarcely conscious of knowing more about Mr. Combe than his name, and the
fact that he was a phrenologist." "the appearance of which created a sensation
unparalleled by any philosophical work ever published in the language."
Illustrated London News, 1858.

George
Combe's Constitutionof Man sold approximately 350,000 copies
between 1828 and 1900, an astounding number at the time and scarcely matched
by any other book regardless of genre. In contrast, Darwin's Origin of
Species (1859) sold only 50,000 between 1859 and 1900 (in the UK). Over
100 publishers produced the book continuously until 1899. Constitution's
remarkable sales and the even larger number of people who read or were familiar
with its philosophy of natural law, the amount of critical attention it
received, and its influence make Constitution, and the phrenological
naturalism it catered, anything but peripheral to the history of nineteenth-century
Britain. Few book's were more widely distributed or were so influential
in changing the way people conceived of themselves and Nature. The book's fame
did carry a word for phrenology with it; but Constitution is not
a book about phrenology, instead it is a book of natural philosophy which
teaches that Man is as subject to natural laws as the rest of Nature- Physical,
Organic, and Moral. Ignorance of or disobedience to the natural laws led
to "punishment"- such as catching a cold from exposure to the elements.
The first steps towards the good life were to study and obey the distinct
natural laws (notably excluding the Bible). Combe's book was hugely controversial
from the 1820s through the 1850s. Evangelicals founded societies to oppose
it, wrote books and articles against it, and sometimes even burned it! Thus
fuss popularly believed to have resulted from Darwin's Origin of Species
pales in comparison to that of Combe's Constitution, one of the most
influential books of the 19th century. The 8th was the final edition revised
by Combe.

(The
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